Unlocking the Book of Secrets

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IGN visits the set of the National Treasure sequel.

By Cindy White

On a colder-than-usual evening back in June of this year, IGN was one of a few select outlets invited to the backlot at Universal Studios, Hollywood, to observe the filming of the upcoming action sequel National Treasure: Book of Secrets. Now, with the film's Dec. 21st release date fast approaching, we're finally able to share some of the sights and interviews from that visit.

Director Jon Turteltaub returns to the helm of this follow-up, inspired by the historical factoid that 18 pages mysteriously went missing from the diary of Lincoln assassin John Wilkes Booth. Like the first film, Book of Secrets blends real history with conspiracy theories and outright fiction, presenting a series of clues that lead Nicolas Cage's Ben Gates on a treasure hunt tied to the secrets of his ancestors.

This time, Ben's not just on a quest for treasure, he's also out to clear his family name when one of the missing pages turns up and implicates his great-grandfather in a conspiracy to kill Lincoln. The trail leads Ben and his team to the titular Book of Secrets, supposedly handed down from one president to the next. Said to contain the truth about every secret in the nation's history — from Area 51 to the Kennedy assassination — the legendary book may also hold the key to finding the greatest treasure of all time.

Also reprising their roles from the original are Justin Bartha as Ben's tech-savvy sidekick Riley; Diane Kruger as history expert Abigail Chase; and Jon Voight as Ben's father, Patrick. And lending some additional star power to the cast this time around is Helen Mirren, fresh from her Oscar win for best actress in The Queen, playing Ben's mom, and Ed Harris as Ben's latest adversary.

According to just about everyone involved, the goal in making the sequel was to create something bigger and better than the last one. And judging by the set at Universal Studios, it looks like they're going to achieve that. A quartet of principle cast members — Cage, Kruger, Batha and Harris — were on hand the night of the filming for a scene in which they explore a hidden underground chamber beneath a famous monument (which monument it is, we can't reveal). This particular cave-like set is massive, complex and impressive, with large, Native-American inspired carvings, working fire effects, three waterfalls and a massive wooden structure in the center shaped like a flat wheel. This is just one in a series of booby traps which require some Indiana Jones-style ingenuity to conquer. As the chamber slowly floods with water, our heroes must figure out how to turn the wheel in order to avoid drowning.

Producer Jerry Bruckheimer, who was also on set that evening, recognizes that this isn't the first film to incorporate such elaborate physical puzzles, but insists that the series of challenges in this film are unique.

"I don't think it is," Bruckheimer says when asked if the traps were inspired by the ones in the Indiana Jones films. "I mean, I'm sure the writers saw the movie. We don't have any rats or snakes. Yet. We could add them in post-production, I guess."

And speaking of Indy, there's a story that goes along with this set. Just a few days before we visited, some pictures of this particular location turned up online labeled as images from the highly anticipated fourth Indiana Jones film. Seeing the structure in person, it's easy to understand how the mistake could be made. And following the angle from the set to the roof of a nearby parking garage, it's also clear how the shot was illicitly acquired.

But back on the set, no one seemed to be too worried about the leak. As cool as this set is, there are bigger surprises in store in the film ("This is one of our smaller sets," Bruckheimer brags). Many of the key sequences were shot on location at actual famous landmarks, including Mount Rushmore (which they were the first film crew to visit since Hitchcock filmed North by Northwest there in 1959), the White House, Mount Vernon and Buckingham Palace. While these locations presented certain logistical challenges, Turteltaub felt they were necessary to achieve a sense of realism in the film.

"Look, a lot of these things, at some point, you can build and fake, and we do in moments, but being in the actual location adds an authenticity to the story, to the images and we kind of want to see the beauty of historical places," the director says. "That's part of the fun of this movie -- it's celebrating history and it's specifically pointing out that America actually has some."

Turteltaub, who has developed a love of history through the making of these films, added that the experience and success of the first National Treasure helped a lot when approaching the officials responsible for granting permission to film in these carefully protected institutions.

"We learned on the first film what the do's and don'ts were about filming, and also getting permission to film," he says. "This being a sequel to a successful movie, it made it a lot easier. We weren't trying to explain what we were doing. They kind of knew what we were doing from the first movie. It helped, for instance, that the National Archives attendance has increased by 50 percent since the movie came out. That helped us when we approached Mount Vernon because they would also love to see awareness generated from the movie of Mount Vernon and what it has to offer. The primary thing that every location insists on is not security -- believe it or not, security's second. The primary goal is that the filming doesn't impede the public's ability to enjoy the location. So if we're going to shoot at Mount Rushmore, we can't wreck it for the people who are going that day. We have to find a way to be incorporated into things."